All posts tagged: women in the Church

Dr. Kimberly Baker, associate professor of church history at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, was the co-chair of the organizational team for the “Women of the Church: Strength of the Past. Hope for Tomorrow” leadership conference last fall, hosted by the Sisters of St. Benedict of Ferdinand, Indiana, in partnership with St. Meinrad. The conference drew over 250 people, both women and men, and caught the attention of Pope Francis, who sent a letter of blessing to the conference. The program featured three keynote speakers: Carolyn Woo, Kathleen Sprows Cummings, and Mary Catherine Hilkert, OP. There were also ten breakout sessions facilitated by leaders such as Ed Hahnenberg, Vanessa White, Ann Garrido, and others. A unique feature of the conference was a Saturday afternoon moderated conversation with Archbishop Joseph Tobin, then of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, and Bishop Charles Thompson of the Diocese of Evansville. The conference guests had an opportunity to submit questions in advance. Then, Baker moderated a conversation with the bishops about many of the themes and concerns raised in those questions. …

“How wonderful the bond . . . one in hope, one in desire, one in discipline, one in the same service!” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], §1642) The identity of the wife of the permanent deacon exists in a uniquely uncharacterized, uncategorized reality. Examining both universal and national declarations and norms only validates the difficulty of finding any substantive (certainly, any consistent) theological understanding of this most particular relationship between Marriage and Holy Orders, wife and husband.[1] Indeed, while this most relevant dynamic has been addressed in part, it remains a lacuna within the theological tradition of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Whereas the husband in this marriage is ontologically changed by the sacrament of Holy Orders, which confers upon him “an imprint that cannot be removed and configures [him] to Christ, who made himself the ‘deacon’ or servant of all” (CCC §1570), the wife in this marriage does not in any capacity participate in this particular sacramental characterization. Even as husband and wife “are no longer two, but one flesh,” (Mt 19:6, …

Do the Church’s family policies adequately support family life? A few considerations. When I attended my five-year law school reunion, the first since we’d graduated, my classmates—many of them miserable in high-stress, unglamorous legal jobs—were astounded by what they perceived as my good fortune. “You get to travel, appear on television, speak at high schools and colleges?” they marveled. I was asked more than once, “How do I get a job like YOURS?” Yes, on the surface, my first fresh-out-of-law-school position was a pretty sweet one. The late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin had asked me to direct the Respect Life Office for the Archdiocese of Chicago, meaning I was responsible for issues like abortion and assisted suicide. In the early 1990s, it also meant I was often called upon to defend the Church’s teaching at a time when the Supreme Court had recently handed down the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision and when state legislatures were subsequently considering varying degrees of proposals that would, in light of Casey, allow for some modest protections for women and …

Marianne Stroud has been assisting at births since she was a teenager in South Africa, tagging along with her mother who worked as a midwife there. Today she is a Certified Nurse-Midwife and mother herself, as well as a convert to Catholicism, who works at a practice that was founded to offer women an authentically pro-life approach to women’s health services. The Fertility & Midwifery Care Center, based in Ft. Wayne, IN, employs both CNM’s and OB/GYN’s (including her husband, Christopher Stroud) and utilizes the Creighton Fertility Model/NaProTECHNOLOGY to offer a full range of obstetrical, fertility, and gynecological care. She is also the Board Chairman of Women’s Health Link, a not-for-profit organization designed to help women connect with pro-life healthcare and other various services. The following is the text of the telephone interview Stroud granted to Church Life Journal, as part of our wider attempt to foster a greater attention to the pastoral needs of women in the Church today. TG: Could you speak to possible misconceptions about a Catholic approach to fertility and infertility? …